Montessori School of Greater Lafayette Blog

Insights and inspiration from our Montessori classrooms.

15 years ago the Lafayette Journal and Courier announced MSGL's plans to add an elementary program and move all of its programs to a new space.

The Morton Community Center on Chauncey Avenue had been MSGL's home since 1985.

As the article states, the new elementary program was originally going to be housed in a home on Rainbow Drive that had been donated by an MSGL family. A change of plans relocated that first class to some available classroom space inside the Temple Israel on Cumberland Avenue.

In February 2001, all of our programs, from the parent-infant class through elementary, moved into our permanent home in the former Calvary Baptist church on Soldiers Home Road.

In 2007, the elementary classes moved into the Montessori House, a remodeled home adjacent to the campus.

MSGL has plans to expand once again in the near future to add a second toddler classroom and a gym/gross motor space.

Related Posts

Wayback Wednesday: 1998 - Peter Cottontails and Banana Bombs

1998 was a big year for MSGL because we announced our expansion so we received lots of media coverage. This week's Wayback Wednesday post features another story from the Lafayette Journal and Courier. On July 7th, a story about our summer camp cooking class filled the 4 Kidz Only page. (I love that the J&C embraced phonetic spelling!)

The photos are beautiful and the children's quotes, especially about date math, are really sweet.

Featured teacher,Revati Nemaniis still with MSGL today in the Catalpa class. The children featured in this article are now in college. Are any of them studying to be chefs? We would love to know. If you know Alie Magnante, Daniel Plesniak, Asher Bogdanove, or Andrew Staiger, please pass this along. It would be great to hear from them.

And maybe you and your young ones will give one of these recipes a go? We would love to hear about that, too.

Wayback Wednesday: 1998 - Toddler Field Trip to Columbian Park

The MSGL photo archives are a bit disorganized and I usually have to sift through them to come up with a Wayback Wednesday post, but this week the work was already done. After leading the toddler families on this field trip to Lafayette's Columbian Park Zoo in the Spring of 1998, teacher Suman Harshvardhan put together this little photo album for the children.

Look who's ready for a ride on the Columbian Park Express!

Suman makes sure everyone has a snack. The old Big Dipper slide can be seen in the background. The slide was dismantled when the park was renovated in the early 00's. Here's a photo of the slide in it's glory days...

These kiddos are college freshmen (or nearly) now. Thanks for reading and have a great Wednesday!

Anita McKinney, our first executive director, was leaving MSGL to live closer to her family in Florida. Her MSGL family held a farewell reception in her honor just before the winter break. These are photos of some of the children wishing her well.

Anita started working at MSGL in July, 1991 when the parent-owned school decided it needed a full-time. Up to then, the office staff coordinated with the Board of Directors. This next photo is actually from about 1996. It shows Anita with Beth Nichols, who was then the office manager, in the teeny, tiny office at Morton Center.

Beth is still with us and now works as our accountant. Anita has been working with Florida's Duval County Extension office since 1998. She is currently teaching personal financial management in Jacksonville. She is retiring in January and will start another "job" taking care of her twin grandchildren Dominic and Danica. She is excited about this new chapter in her life and told me, "They will be three by then , so I will start my own little Montessori home-school with them. I am looking forward to this next step!"

Best wishes, Anita! And happy Wednesday to you, faithful readers.

Wayback Wednesday: 2000 - Building MSGL - We got the keys and went to work

On September 21, 2000, Montessori Parents, Inc. officially closed on the purchase of the property at 2552 Soldiers Home Road that would become the new campus of the Montessori School of Greater Lafayette. To celebrate and prepare for the next step, the board of directors and some staff and parents met that evening in the sanctuary of what was the former Calvary Baptist Church. Board president Craig Lamb offered a toast with champagne served in paper cups.

Board members, staff, and parents celebrate the beginning of the construction of the new MSGL campus.

The next morning, demolition of the buildings began. MSGL parent Tony Harvey coordinated the building project. His father, Donald Harvey, was the general contractor.

Don and Tony Harvey

These are photos of the front of the sanctuary that is now the northwest corner of the Catalpa Room. When asked about these photos, Tony said that the gold walls on the left were part of the room that lead to the baptistry. "If you came to Calvary Baptist Church and you wanted to be saved," he explained, "you had to go through that room."

Tearing out the walls of the former sanctuary to create the Catalpa Room.

Just for perspective, this is the same wall four months later with new heat/ac, drywall, and paint.

This was just the beginning of 5 months of hard and dirty work by many dedicated staff and parent volunteers. Three generations of families came together for one common goal. True friendships were forged. A lot of those people are still involved with MSGL today. I look forward to sharing the few photos and many stories of that time here on Wayback Wednesdays. If you were part of this amazing project and wish to share your stories, please add them as comments to the bottom of these posts or emaill me and I will be so happy to include them in an upcoming post. Of course, any photos you share will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading! Have a terrific Wednesday.

Wayback Wednesday: Halloween Edition

We're really reaching back here for Halloween gold - all the way back to 1989. Back in the day, the whole school had a costume parade in the Morton Center gymnasium. It was a big year for bunnies, clowns, and superheroes.

I hope you have enjoyed our first-ever Halloween edition of Wayback Wednesday. If you know anyone in these photos and want to share their names with us (or our website with them) we would really appreciate it. Have fun tomorrow and I hope you get lots and lots of candy - or not. Whichever you prefer :)

Wayback Wednesday: 2001 - Elementary Space Projects

"No matter what we touch, an atom, or a cell, we cannot explain it without knowledge of the wide universe." - Maria Montessori, 1948, To Educate the Human Potential

The Elementary students present their space projects in these photos from 2000 - 2001.